“Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.”

“There’s an old adage: the sensation of drowning reminds you of everything you ever knew about swimming.”

“Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.”

“What an old maid I'm getting to be. lacking the courage to be in love with death!”

“Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet—never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid.”

“Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation-- every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.”